[Note: In a previous essay I wrote about the Sikh perspective that All is Divine, and how it shaped my observations and experiences while traveling in Spain. I experienced divinity in three elements—in nature, in people, and in moments. Below is a portrait of a group of those people, four British women from Southampton, England. I will publish one more portrait in a subsequent essay.]

The next night in Ibiza we found ourselves again in a larger group. This time with four women from Southampton, England. They were on a girls trip, bubbly with energy. I didn’t know much about Southampton. I knew it wasn’t London. To the average American mind, in England there is London and there is The Rest.

Within minutes, it became clear these women were from The Rest. Their accents were thick and rough, a far cry from Kensington, Soho, or Hyde Park. They were rowdy and clumsy, falling over each other in a group picture they asked us to take. It took them ten minutes to coordinate a group smile. In raucous fits of laughter they snorted loudly and uncontrollably. Their bodies spasmed, caught in involuntary throes, like kinked slinkies spazzing in every direction. Their laughter shook the table. Through their weighty accents they taught us foul British slang and shared stories of wild herd animals grazing in the front yards of their hometown. Southampton was an industrial port town, they said. A blue collar path to nowhere. The Titanic was the best thing to come ever out of Southampton. It sank. Most people marry young, usually to each other, and never leave. Including them. They were a two hour train from London but culturally a world away.

They rolled their eyes when we spoke of life in New York City. Americans with big ideas, they snickered. If they were envious of our lives, envy was buried deep beyond distaste. In the beginning, there appeared a world of difference between them and us. We felt it in many ways. 

But as the night went on, in difference emerged similarity, fog burning off to reveal a blue sky. Beyond the twists and turns in our meandering conversation was common ground.

I asked one of the women if she had ever wanted to live in London. Or New York. Or Los Angeles. Or anywhere far away from home. Somewhere that finally made her life feel as big as her dreams. You Americans, tipsy on your ideals, she ribbed. I laughed politely but pressed on. How come you never left? My curiosity felt well-intentioned so I was undeterred. How does one never move away from home? She paused long enough to suggest there was a deeper answer coming. 

“I’m not sure,” she said. She sighed. She paused. Her silence filled the space. 

“Life is simple. And it’s also complicated.” 

We reached the topic of American culture. The women were fiery in their disdain for our disease of mass shootings. Horrible and pathetic, they said. Their questions to us were simple and profound. Why do you keep shooting each other? Why does nothing change? How many more children will die until something does change? One of them welled up with tears. How do you do this to one another, she yearned, eyes glassy and wet at the corners. She sniffled. As a soon-to-be-first-time-mother, her whole body, maybe her whole soul, seemed to be asking for two. 

Was her capacity to care anything short of divine? To care about something bigger than, and outside of, herself. To care about Americans and our American problems. She certainly didn’t need to care. She lived a world away, across the Atlantic ocean, in a small industrial town with its own challenges, characters and concerns. These American messes: they are our messes. Not theirs. But she did care. The tears in her eyes testified.

In this moment, despite growing up thousands of miles from the United States, in a rough and tumble corner of the world and mired in the minutia of their own lives, four women exuded a genuine capacity to care about lives far from theirs. In their concern for American woe, in their pining for a future where children are not mowed down video-game style with automatic assault rifles, these British women became as American as we are.  

In this moment, the distance between them and us evaporated. Difference collapsed. Otherness disappeared into the night, replaced by a sameness in belief. There was a divinity in this sameness. A levity in how familiar they felt. In this moment, they weren’t British and we weren’t American. In this moment, they weren’t middle class and we weren’t upper class. In this moment, they weren’t soon-to-be-mothers and we weren’t men. 

In this moment, they were just people who cared. 

Divinity in all People.